Where are you Rhinita? Come home, I love you!

A tragically appropriate photo of the lost hero from last fall.

         I left Missoula a few weeks ago and headed to Seattle to see some friends.  It was a fun stay until the last day when I went to leave and my car was gone along with my carefully packed backpack for Guatemala that was safely hidden in the trunk.  I made it down to Portland via my dad and instead of relaxing for 6 days before my flight to Guatemala I spent the time frantically scouring the goodwills of Portland for all the things I needed.  Bit of a rough start to the trip to say the least.  Luckily I have wonderful friends and family who kindly donated items and spent countless hours driving me around portand buying things.  Rhinita (my car) has not yet returned.  I am hoping she has escaped her captors and is homeward bound as we speak. 

looking back at Santa Cruz from the lake

I made it to the tiny village of Santa Cruz de la Laguna Sunday.  The village used to be down by the lake, but after one to many floods they moved up the hill.  Since then the gringos have taken over the lake front property.  They think the locals are crazy for living up on the hill and the locals think they're crazy for living down by the lake, so really it works out pretty well.  The town is just a bunch of houses, a school, our clinic and a couple of tiny tiendas that pretty much only sell Coke.  Their's one guy who has a cart selling fried chicken, and on the weekend my host family also sells fried chicken.  Apparently people really like fried chicken, or maybe they are just happy to have something they don't have to cook.  I would have though 2 chicken stands directly next to each other would have saturated the market, but no one seems to think it's a problem.

my house

I am living with an older couple.  They have 7 kids and all but the last one is out of the house and married.  They are incredibly kind and are very polite about my terrible Spanish.  This is a Mayan village so everyone speaks ketchecal, the local dialect of Mayan.  Everyone who has gone to school speaks Spanish as well, but it is there second language and at home they speak ketchecal.  It's fun to listen too and I have so far learned to say hello, so I'm of to a roaring start with my ketchecal!

the clinic is on the 2nd floor

The clinic is run by an American Doctor name Craig.  After 11 + years runny the clinic he has a lot of insights to share.  His method of teaching is throw you in and see what happens.  I managed to get him to let me shadow another student for my first 3 days and now I am taking medical histories and doing the reporting. Basically there are 3 awesome Mayan ladies who are trained to take the medical histories, then report them to the doctor who tells them what meds to give and he also examines the patient if needed.  When there are students here the poor assistants have the unfortunate task of translating into ketchecal for us and sitting there while we slowly and painfully butcher both Spanish and the medical process.  They are incredibly patient and kind.  I intend to buy them gifts to make up for my Spanish.  The worst is when you have a patient that speaks Spanish so you have to speak directly to them and can't hide your terrible Spanish behind the translator.  Most people are pretty polite about it.  I did have one lady my first day give me a look like, um is this a joke?  Why is this "Doctor" person not capable of speaking?

the offending church

There are about 3 or 4 churches here in the village all of whom enjoy blaring music like it's fiesta time all the time to encourage people to come worship.  We keep getting patients in the clinic complaining of hearing loss and if they're under 80 then inevitable they live next to a church or are in a church band.  We have at least a block buffer between the churches and our house, so up to this point I've found it charming.  So far it had only been at night, but apparently the Catholics think that Saturday morning at 6 am is as good a time as any for party worshiping.  They went non stop for over an hour complete with a lovely 5 minute bell ringing session just in case anyone anywhere was possibly still sleeping.  So, thanKs to the Catholics I got an early start to my day.  I took the boat across the lake to the thriving metropolis of panajachel to see the sights.  Mostly I am just enjoying gringo people watching.

Hope everyone is well and has a happy turkey day!